Should the U.S. Intervene or End Syrian War?

Whether saber rattling or not, word is out that the White House is “rethinking its options” on intervening in the Syrian war. The collapse of John Kerry’s Geneva II talks between the rebels and regime, the lengthening casualty lists from barrel-bomb attacks, and a death toll approaching 150,000, are apparently causing second thoughts. All the usual suspects are prodding Obama to plunge in, if not with troops, at least with a no-fly zone to prevent Bashar al-Assad from using his air power.

Our frustration is understandable. Yet it does not change the reality. This is not America’s war. Never was. As Obama said, it is “somebody else’s civil war.”

Still, the case against intervention needs to be restated. First and foremost, Obama has no authority to go to war in Syria, for Congress has never voted to authorize such a war. An unprovoked attack on Syria would be an impeachable act. Last August, the American people were almost unanimously opposed to intervention. The firestorm they created was why Congress ran away from the Obama-Kerry plan for missile strikes. So if Obama has no authority to attack Syria, and America does not want a war, why, after Iraq and Afghanistan, would Obama divide his nation and plunge his country into that civil war?

What are the arguments for intervention? Same old, same old. America has a moral obligation to end the barbarism. At the time of Rwanda we said, “Never again!” Yet it is happening again. And we have a “Responsibility to Protect” Syrians from a dictator slaughtering his own people. But while what is happening in Syria is horrible, all Middle East ethnic-civil-sectarian wars tend to unfold this way. And if there is a “moral” obligation to intervene, why does it not apply to Israel and Turkey, Syria’s nearest neighbors? Why does that moral duty not apply to the European Union, upon whose doorstep Syria sits? Why is it America’s moral obligation, 5,000 miles away? It is not. The Turks, Israelis, EU and Gulf Arabs who hate Assad would simply like for us to come and fight their war for them.

The Washington Post says we must address not only the moral “nightmare,” but also the “growing threat … to vital U.S. interests.” Exactly what “vital interests” is the Post talking about? Syria has been ruled by the Assads for 40 years. And how have our vital interests been imperiled? And if our vital interests are imperiled, how much more so are those of Israel and Turkey? Yet neither has chosen to invest the blood of their sons in bringing Assad down.

If we have an enemy in this fight, it is al-Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, all of which are terrorist and implacably anti-American. And who is keeping these enemies of ours out of Damascus? Assad, Hezbollah, Iran and our old friend Vladimir Putin. And who has been supplying the terrorists? Our friends in the Gulf, with weapons funneled through Turkey, our NATO ally.

Have the interventionists who are beside themselves watching all these insurrections and wars breaking out thought through what is likely to happen if we intervene? The Syrian war would become a more savage affair, as Assad would know he was now in a fight to the finish. As U.S. air power was committed to the defeat of Assad, his allies would likely provide more weapons for his defense. Casualties could soar and the probability of a wider war would increase geometrically.

Should Assad fall, his routed soldiers and Alawites and Christians would face reprisals for which we would be morally responsible, as it was our intervention that brought this about. We might have to intervene with troops to stop a massacre by jihadists. And if Assad fell, pro-Western rebels would likely have to fight the al-Qaida rebels for power. Syria could come apart, and we would own it.

Obama’s frustration is understandable. He said two years ago Assad must go. Assad flipped him off. Obama said use of chemical weapons would be a “red line” which, if crossed, would bring serious consequences. Assad’s troops apparently crossed that line. What did we do? Worked with Russia to remove the weapons.

Washington is enraged that Putin continues to support Assad. But Assad’s regime is the recognized and legal government of Syria. Russia has a naval base in Latakia, is owed billions by Damascus, and has been Syria’s ally for decades. Why should Putin abandon Assad at our request? What have we done for him lately? Besides send Billy Jean King to his Olympics? Why, Putin might ask, should he abandon his Syrian allies rather than us, the Turks, and Gulf Arabs abandoning ours?

There is a grave moral issue here—for us. How, under just war theory, can we continue to sustain a conflict that is killing thousands every month with no end in sight? Are we not morally obliged to try to stop such a war?

MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

Hide 11 comments

11 Responses to Should the U.S. Intervene or End Syrian War?

” . . . for Congress has never voted to authorize such a war. An unprovoked attack on Syria would be an impeachable act. Last August, the American people were almost unanimously opposed to intervention.”

This is the least important consideration. The Constitution is clear on the Use of the military and minus an amendment, which I doubt would pass ever, I stand on the executives power in that regard.

Congress certainly has the power to Declare war — but that does prevent the US executive from exercising military force. Now I think it’s a good idea minus any real emergency to do so — but congressional authorization is the very low as any mandatory check.

I know someone is going to bring up the Congressional War Powers Act born out the mess of the 1970’s student stupidity — talk about unnecessary violence. But the War Powers act does trump the US Constitution.

I however agree, that war is a nasty, brutal, filthy, utter inane business best left alone. But whatever its insanity, human beings find themselves ordering men to do so – one hopes there is some rational purpose to the contradiction.

I further agree that what is happening in Syria is not genocide triggering an intervention. The civil war is an internal struggle for who runs the place. And by all accounts the opposition is no less brutal than the current admin. And there is no reason to believe that they will be any less brutal even if they win. The depth of sectarian revenge that seems entrenched in Middle East conflicts apparently is a very deep well.

And while sympathy tilts towards those who may be getting beat in the end someone will be on that short of the stick hopefully and the business of killing will end.

And while its painful to watch, most of the pain is not our own and we must treat the house of Syria as though it had walls with sympathy but noninterference as the family attempts to settle the matter. It is there’s to settle.

If we want address the problems of refugees then we can operate outside the War Zone under the auspices of the UN if they can tear themselves away from moralizing about abortion, homosexual behavior and the Catholic Church, there are more pressing moral dilemmas more in keeping with there mission.

I don’t know that the USA has the ability to end the war. What leverage do we really have over the KSA, Israel and the Islamic extremists who are seeking to overthrow the Assad regime? Not to mention the actual rebels on the ground in Syria?

The real issue is avoiding intervention on the side of the rebels. The USA simply will not be satisfied with any “responsibility to protect” or “no fly zone.” It will be Libya all over again. What is approved supposedly on the basis of “humanitarian” concerns will become a US commitment to see the job to the end, ie to the overthrow of the regime.

That’s the way these things work. Once in, there is no restraining the intervention and there is no possibility of the US settling for anything other than total “success.” Events take on a momentum of their own. The killing, we will be told, can only and finally come to end with regime change. Otherwise, we are just prolonging the struggle. Equalizing things a bit between the government and the rebels, while the civilians, and the soldiers and the other fighters, continue to die. And, if US “credibility” is at stake now, how much more so will we be told it is once we actually are in a shooting war with the regime? No, once in, the rebels, like the rebels in Libya before them, will start waiving signs saying, “Where is the USA?, Where is NATO?” The no fly zone and responsibility to protect will quickly morph into US and NATO air power and missiles being used, not to keep Assad’s jets and helicopters grounded, not to protect civilian areas, but to provide a “creeping barrage,” behind which the rebels can advance to Damascus. And, if that doesn’t work, it will come to boots on the ground, as in Iraq.

Then, when Damascus falls, the Syrian military is destroyed, and Assad is murdered, like Gaddafi and Saddam before him, the country will lack a real government. Leaving the US two choices, both bad.

Pack up and go home, and leave chaos, anarchy, looting, lawlessness, and reprisals in our wake, as competing tribal, ethnic and sectarian militias, groups of thugs and simple criminal gangs, foreign jihadists, and who knows what else fight for power, for the spoils, for the fun of it, for Allah, for hate’s sake, and for no reason other than that is what they do and don’t know anything else, or because someone else is fighting them, and so on. Call that the Libyan option.

Or we stay and try to put someone, anyone, who is the least repugnant to us and our interests, in power, while the country slides into renewed civil strife, with sectarian fighting continuing where it left off before “liberation” and the US and its allies now the target of a guerilla and terrorist war. Complete with quislings and hired mercenaries paid to do the brunt of the dirty work, so as to artificially keep down the “official” casualty count. Call that the Iraqi option.

This is the “success” that we should be avoiding.

The US is NOT responsible for everything that happens in the world. Moreover, it is simply false that the US could resolve the problem merely by exercising a little of the military might it has in abundance. That was false in Somalia and Kosovo and Iraq and Libya, and it would have been false in Rwanda too. The US does NOT have some sort of cost free magic bullet, that makes dictatorships and human rights violations and civil wars and so on simply vanish. What the US does have, in abundance, is conventional military muscle. Yes, the US can go into virtually any country in the world with its military, even with just its air power, in many cases, and knock out the current government, and its armed forces and other supporters in a matter of weeks if not days. It has THAT power. But that is the least of the power and ability needed to really solve these problems. Smashing the existing “bad” authority does not, somehow, call into existence a new, “good” authority to replace it. Nor does it end sectarian, political, ethnic, etc divisions. Regional outside powers still have their interests, and their allies and clients. Minority groups will continue to be vulnerable. Complex problems that existed when, at least, there was a central government in place that managed to keep some semblance of order, do not simply go “bye bye” because the USA has bombed and missiled that central government into the dustbin of history.

That is the real issue. Stopping the civil war entirely may even be beyond our so called allies’ (Turkey, Israel, the KSA) power. But that is not something we have to take the fall for. After all, we had a pretty destructive Civil War ourselves, didn’t we? Well, who is responsible for that, if not ourselves (no matter how you apportion the blame between the contending American groups)? Perhaps some combination of France, the UK and Prussia could have intervened to stop the war or to ensure the South’s victory. Does that, somehow, mean that those powers are to blame for not doing so? That they are to blame for our fighting, and that they somehow abnegated either a “responsibility” to protect us from our own governments, or to stop the war entirely because it was “unjust?”

No, we were responsible for our own destiny, no one else, as other countries must be. No country has the power, much less the wisdom or the legitimate authority, to really end underlying internal conflicts in other countries. It is time to recognize it for the fig leaf for neo colonialism that it is, and jettison this “responsibility to protect” nonsense. Civil wars, civil strife, and so on, are part of human history. The best that outsiders can do is to try to succor the refugees. Not attempt to play God with their all too human political and other frailties.

As AIPAC has met with a number of rebuffs over Syria and Iran from elements in Congress, the desperation among neoconservatives is rising. One can expect a great deal of public handwringing over the need to “take action.”

We can’t not do anything when people are being slaughtered if there is something we can do to prevent it. We can join with other nations to provide as much humanitarian aid and refuge as possible. As far as military action and regime change, we could lop the heads off the Assad leadership by remote control as we do other terrorists, with the big difference being that the terrorism happening in Syria is not directed at us or even our allies and may in large part be directed at other terrorists. So, it is a conundrum as detailed by Buchannan and phillylawyer. My only addition would be that we have to do something, and humanitarian aid may be our only choice while we diplomatically negotiate with the Russians over what can be done. They just won the most gold and most medals at the winter Olympics. They may be feeling the established power to accommodate over the transient power to dominate.
I am curious about the weapons support by un-named sunni governments and if it is just a fortuitous money making enterprise for un-named arms dealers ready to sell to that governments mountain of cash and ocean of oil (debt relief for a thousand Alex?), and if the rebel supporters end game is getting the US involved, thereby extending the flow of money to the merchants of death.
It is just an endless and too complicated a game over there, with too many intractable enemies and no real way to know for sure what or who to support much less fight for. But unlike many here at TAC, I trust the pragmatism of Obama and believe that the course he sets really does have more intelligence and planning than any set by his predecessor. Like, it may appear he is heading us off to another intervention when really he is just heading us towards a stronger negotiating position.
It may be an unfortunate trueth, but the only people in the US interested in intervening in Syria are those vested interests making money off that enterprise. Our people may be sympathetic and willing to send humanitarian aid, but nobody wants to fight over there for any reason except maybe being able to put 3 dollar gas into their pickup truck. And again, it is the gun not the person. The whole Syrian conflict arises out of the supply of weapons just as surely as any massacre in any theater. Even in the darkest jungles of Africa it is the guy with the AR directing the charge of the machete.

Had there existed some other dominant republic in the 19th century founded on a Constitution virtually identical with ours, and with proportionate power and status within that contemporary historical setting, would it have had an unquestionable moral obligation to intervene in the war pursued between 1861-1865 in these United States?

No equivalency need be postulated between antagonists in that conflict and what is occurring in Syria (or anywhere else for that matter).

The question only concerns whether those who advocate intervention today or tomorrow in this or that bloody dispute where this republic’s national interests are not directly and/or immediately jeopardized, would look benignly upon an historical past in which some agency had presumed to intervene in the 19th century to sway the outcome of a defining event in our own history.

Lincoln had an opinion of the rest of the world’s ability to determine the political future of the US: “From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

The “vital” interests of banksters and oligarchs who want to set up satrapies that will serve them.

Those are “American” interests to the degree that some of them are Americans, but they are contrary to the interests of 300 million American citizens, who our government no longer serves except in lipservice to propagandistic noisemaking. There is no loyalty at all to the American people, for whom they have the same contempt for as they do the legitimate aspirations of foreign people they seek domination over.

Thank you for making such an important point. By intervening in a conflict such as Syria’s, we rob a people of the very history they are currently writing with their own blood. If their goal was peace, they would have simply surrendered to Assad by now. Instead they are giving their lives to give birth to a new Syria.

I’ve always thought that if by some possibility the people of North Korea could raise up in arms against their wretched tyrants, there would instantly be a slew of internationalists demanding that we intervene to “stop the bloodshed!,” as if it was all a petty schooyard fight to be broken up by the principal, as if there is never anything worth fighting for.

The Petro Dollar is at stake in Syria. If Damascus remains in Russia’s orbit Gazprom will overshadow OPEC and the dollar will no longer remain the world reserve currency. This will mark the end of the American Empire. Trouble is, removing Assad will only delay the inevitable. Imperial Washington should do what none expect. Retire gracefully. Repatriate it’s legions and focus on the restoration of the Republic. What are the chances this will happen? How will the era of American world hegemony end Pat? Or do you suppose it will not?